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The Real Rahul Yadav Story

I have been reading up on it. The real story here is not that one young tech entrepreneur was impolite. The sample email I read does not even begin to be impolite. Since when were tech entrepreneurs expected to be polite?

The real story here is Rahul Yadav owned too little of his company by the time he got fired. He was no longer in the driving seat. And that is a very bad idea. You can not replace a Founder CEO with some Fortune 500 old hack CEO. It is a DNA thing.

The VCs made two big mistakes. The VCs made their first big mistake way before Rahul Yadav sent out any bad tasting emails. The mistake was they took away too much equity. Power is like money. People want it regardless of if it is good for them, or they know what to do with it. Rahul should have been at 30% not 3% which is where he was when he got fired.

The second mistake was the VCs think they can replace a Founder CEO. Good luck with that. A lot of people will lose a lot of money when Housing goes down.

"Ye mote Gururaj uncle har chhoti cheez par article kyu likh dete hain." ........ The moment you saw this comment you knew a backlash was around the corner. Not so much because of what was said but because of who said it. These days to be Rahul Yadav is to cop it no matter what. ....... Ravi Gururaj, chairman of Nasscom’s Product Council, the writer of that column, will be the first to admit that he cannot be called thin. He had written a column on yourstory.com about a supposed social media spat between Snapdeal’s Rohit Bansal and Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal. ..... Rohit was perceived to be saying in a newspaper article that India did not have enough good programmers. Sachin took a dig at him, suggesting that the fault lay in Snapdeal and not in the country. ....... Rahul’s was the first comment on Gururaj’s article. Others followed quickly, saying all he wanted was cheap publicity. Publicity? By trying to make fun of Gururaj? Come on. There are other ways; Rahul knows some of them. Almost inevitably, an article appeared in ET Panache about how Gururaj was large hearted enough to ignore Rahul’s comment. What was he going to do? Sue? Equally inevitably, Alok Kejriwal, an early entrepreneur, jumped to Gururaj’s side to say how much he loved him for his “stature and presence and depth”. ......... Funny. But Kejriwal waited for his chance. Which came when Yadav resigned — the first time. People who make fun of other people’s houses can’t live in their own, he posted. He also posted a power point presentation, for Rahul, on how to write emails. ....... With the internet start-up revolution, all the world is a boys’ hostel. ..... Rahul also got into other unnecessary spats with Deepinder Goyal (he likes to call Goyal a restaurant menu scanner) and Sequoia’s Shailendra Singh (the story is too well known to recount here). ...... Fine. He is cheeky, at times irritating. He likes to troll people. But he is not just that. This columnist had a chance to talk to him in March. He was then in the middle of the spat with Sequoia......... To his credit, Rahul refused to go into any more gory details about Sequoia (confession time: he was goaded). Instead, he wanted to talk about his ideas on how to run the world. All it will take, according to him, is 50 intelligent people. People like him....... It was easy to dismiss this as hyperbole. But he made some valid points about the way the human race has messed it up in areas like oil, education, travel, and housing. Why have been just burning oil instead of looking for sustainable energy sources? Why are all houses boxes, boxes and more boxes? Why such little infrastructure? Why has no innovation happened in house construction? Why are so many people in cities like Mumbai forced to spend so much time travelling? ...... Basic questions, you say? It was responding to the basic needs that made Housing.com such a success: show what it looks like, give her a tour, verify the location, good user interface, data, data and more data. ....... The sadness of it was captured in all its delicate sensitivity by Haresh Chawla, an early investor in Housing.com........ He brought out Rahul’s personality in all its complexity: a shy, socially-awkward, brilliant soul driven to pain and distraction because he was forced to ride the tiger of investor money...... It was tempting to call this article “Boy Interrupted”. But it is not just that; it is brightness, enterprise, spirit interrupted. Until he comes back.

A week after withdrawing resignation, Housing.com chief executive Rahul Yadav decided on Wednesday to allot all his personal holding in the company worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees. ...... "Rahul Yadav has decided to allot all his personal shares worth Rs 150-200 crore to the employees of Housing.com who number 2,251," the housing portal said in a late evening statement....... The value of this stock is worth the employees' one-year salary, it added....... Yadav justified the surprise move, saying he is "just 26 and it's too early in life to get serious about money etc." ...... "Housing.com was started because of two reasons. The problems related to house hunting is unsolved globally. Across the globe there are over 500 players who aggregate the market data for buyers. We want to unify all those and create a global platform for real estate," he said. ...... Yadav had reportedly written a resignation letter on April 30 to the board and investors and questioning their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition". However, on May 5, he withdrew the resignation and apologised for his outbursts. ..... Housing.com, which is backed by Japan's Softbank, said its board has been reconstituted to include all main shareholder representatives....... Last December, it received $90 million funding, led by Japan's SoftBank, valuing the portal at about Rs 1,500 crore........ It would use the funds to map over 40 million houses across 300 cities........ Its other shareholders include Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Nirvana Ventures and Falcon Edge Capital.

Rahul Yadav, the CEO of realty portal Housing.com, on Tuesday withdrew his resignation and apologised for reportedly calling fellow board members and investors

'intellectually incapable of any sensible discussion'

. ...... He added: "I look forward to staying on at Housing as CEO and building an even greater company, while working in full harmony with the board"......... Yadav, the 26-year-old co-founder, had reportedly written a resignation letter on April 30 to board members and investors questioning their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition"..... Founded in 2012 by a dozen IITians, the Mumbai-based company currently offers services in rent/resale, PG/hostels, new projects, land/plot projects, home loans and rental agreement among others.

This announcement from Yadav comes a day after he was trolling on newly formed social networking site Bluegape.com, where it was mentioned that cricketer-turned-investor Yuvraj Singh has invested in Yadav's next venture called ‘NextHousing.com’ through YouWeCan. YouWeCan, a media-focused start-up fund, is planning to take legal action against Bluegape.com. .... A few days after that Yadav was asked to leave the company. However, it didn't end there. A week after Yadav left, Housing was in the news again as the company's website was hacked and Yadav was alleged to be behind the act. However, Yadav announced on his Facebook page that he was not involved in the act.

Yadav spent Rs 100 crore on an advertisement blitzkrieg 'Look Up' that was seen by the investors as throwing away millions. He is also said to have been pushing for acquiring online subscription based real estate data and analytics platform PropEquity, which the investors were not confident of. The investors are said to have been looking for a professional CEO to replace Yadav. .......... Later in May, Yadav gave away his entire stake in the company - Rs 150-200 crore worth of shares - to the 2,251 employees as a gift, saying he is only 26 and "it's too early in life to get serious about money etc.".... Soon after, he challenged Ola Head Bhavish Aggarwal and Zomato's Deepinder Goyal to also give away half of their shares to employees...... Most recently, Yadav had taken a pot shot at Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka by posting a picture of him sleeping at an airport lounge. ........ Housing.com was started in June 2013 by 12 IITians, including Yadav. Currently, nine of the founding members remain involved with the company, holding a combined stake of 8-9 per cent in the company. ..... Yadav holds a 4.5 per cent stake in the company, which was started with the aim of providing housing solutions and unifying all the other real estate players functioning in the country. "We want to unify all those and create a global platform for real estate", Yadav has said in the past. ..... Japan's SoftBank is the major investor in the company giving Housing.com $90 million of funding. It holds 32 per cent stake in the housing company. Besides, Nexus Venture Partners (19 per cent stake), Helion Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Falcon Edge are the other investors in it.

After taking digs at Zomato and Ola, Housing.com head Rahul Yadav has now taken pot shots at Vishal Sikka by posting a picture of the Infosys CEO sleeping at an airport lounge on social networking site, Facebook...... Along with the picture, Yadav wrote: "Infosys CEO Sikka...... When I asked something he replied 'I just want to sleep' without listening to the question grin :D"........ When asked about his opinion on Deepinder Goyal and Zomato during a Reddit AMA (ask-me-anything) session, he said, "A company scanning menus from last 7 years and doing no innovation. And the CEO says 'Aww. So cute'."